good reading

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

YAY! I can finally let the kitty out o' the sack.It was my sweetie's Birthday this Saturday. He turned a million and Saturday was his actual birthday birthday.So I threw him a party. A surprise party. And he was ALMOST surprised. Which is good enough for me.

Firstly there were the invitations.It turns out there is a reason graphic designers go to graphic designer school. Who knew? My amateurish effort...And the wording said:For anybody that cares, I used Picnik (the photo editing site) as I don't have any design software and I'm all with the lazy. The font is pupcat and the balloon I hacked from here.

So I made invites. Then spent the next month obsessing about the weather and the many ways that everything could go horribly wrong.I also bought red stuff. Patterned red table clothes (of which I forgot to take any pictures), red cutlery that I did take pictures of...red napkins (see above). Red side plates and red meat.I spent the two days before cooking up a storm and stashed everything at my brother's house.Figured out a way to get Andy to the island and me there first. So far, so The A team.

Saturday dawned all perfect weathery, I went into a panic-driven flat spin (this is totally what gave me away).

My lovely chum Britt rocked up to help with the logistics and the heavy lifting, which is a teensy bit ironical as one of the bags actually weighed more than her. We were running late and I was wigging out and making a squeeeeeeeee noise through my ears instead of doing anything productive, so Britt called a cab and hustled us down stairs.

We got to the ferry terminal. Now, if you're in the UK you might not know that this weekend was Labor Day weekend (they don't spell Labor with a U on account of how they're wrong wrong wrong). There was an air show on. The island is the perfect spot to watch said air show. The ferry terminal was busy. Very very busy. Assholes to elbows busy.More squeeeing as I realised that WE would be lucky to make the 12.45 ferry (the one the guests were supposed to be on) but then it occurred that they were also likely to be late. So I relaxed a smidgen.

We got over, and went racing for the BBQ area that I had picked out 3 weeks before on one of my reconnaissance missions. To find a group of roughly 35 people already ensconced. "NOOOOOOOO"I didn't like my chances against all 35 of them and while I would totally back Britt in a brawl, Elliot is more of a skater than a fighter these days. So Britt went racing over to the contingency spot and she stood guarding it while we hefted the stuff over. Sterling work she did too, seeing off a group of invaders with nothing more than stern looks (and possibly a little muscle flexing).

Next I did some more flapping and Britt blew up the balloons that would theoretically lead our guests to the meaty fun times. Then she raced off and distributed them liberally. I did a bit of clucking and tweeting and moving things around pointlessly. Then Britt hung up the rest of the decorations. She really did an awesome job and I would probably still be there, crying softly, without her help. And she wore the most gorgeous dress ever. Fact. See:

We got mostly set up. Folks arrived, I changed into something that wasn't literally dripping with my own sweat, had a bellini and waited for my man.Who arrived via the cunning and subterfuge of our chums Ian and Kate.AndAll was well.My Sweetie says he had his best birthday ever. Meat was cooked and eaten, pooches were played with. My dog ran the length of the island to find us (that's a whole different story).The bear ate his own substantial body weight in ribs and other meats. Much champagne was quaffed. Good times were had.And the pictures?Uhhh.That's were it all falls to pieces...I did take this one of my three favorite creatures, and it does pretty nicely sum up the kind of day it was...